How can we alter a huge table in SQL

Question

My table is too big and now i realize that i need to add few columns in that, but when i tried to do this, my alter script took more then 4 hours and database performance also got degraded, so i canceled the query, can anyone suggest better way of doing that

Answer 1

One way is you back up the table first then truncate it, then alter your table. after that insert data in it.